Doc hopes to flip 'Switch' on energy

The folks behind a new documentary about energy, “ Switch,” sure hope so. The film, directed by Harry Lynch, opened in Washington, D.C., this week and is being touted — by audience members quoted in the press release, anyway — as “the first truly balanced energy film” and “the most important energy film since ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’”

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“It’s a film on our energy transition,” Lynch told POLITICO. “We feel like this is a very important topic that’s not really talked about all that much, the actual timeframe of the transition and what that includes. And so to get to that understanding we first had to answer all the really important questions of energy today, like will fracking pollute the water? Is nuclear safe? Can we really clean up coal? Will gasoline prices keep rising? Will solar and wind get to the point where they can make a substantial contribution, where we can really rely on them in the future?”

Lynch knows that tackling such a complicated issue on the big screen is no small task.

“It’s kind of a nerdy topic, so how do you make it interesting?” said Lynch. “People seem to find it very interesting but that was a huge challenge.”

And then there’s politics to contend with.

“It’s a very polarizing issue,” said Lynch. “Energy, in general, is a very polarizing issue so in the film we try very hard to be balanced and to not advocate for one energy [policy] or another.”

Despite the film’s touting of Al Gore’s Academy Award–winning documentary from 2006, Lynch says that the former veep’s work didn’t exactly pave the way for a new wave of energy films.

“You can’t make documentaries on the hope that you’re going to get rich doing it,” said Lynch. “You do it because you believe that the subject matter has to get out there, that it’s so vital that it has to get out there and then you hope that you can make your money back.”

Politicians aren’t exactly helping to promote the issue. In fact, energy was scarcely mentioned at both party’s national conventions.

“I think it’s dicey, politicians are afraid to touch it,” said Lynch.

Watch POLITICO’s full interview with Lynch above, and you can find more information about the film here.